


A ship on the ocean (don't you cry no more)

by bitterf_tta



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Child Neglect, Dean Winchester's Potty Mouth, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Neglected Dean Winchester, Pre-Canon, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:15:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27688807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitterf_tta/pseuds/bitterf_tta
Summary: It's early Fall of 1996, and John Winchester has once again left his sons to fend for themselves. When a teacher starts to suspect that all is not right in the Winchester home, Dean will find out just how much he is willing to sacrifice to keep his family together.(It gets worse before it gets better)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	A ship on the ocean (don't you cry no more)

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, I have tried to make this mostly accurate to canon, but there will probably be discrepancies, not least of all since I think canon sometimes confuses the boys’ backstory. Secondly, I have tried my very best to Americanise my language, but any remaining British-isms are on me (and also on my Word for changing back the language to UK English when I tried to spellcheck).  
>   
> This story will get dark. Heed the warnings in the tags, and if there are any questions, put them in the comments or send me a message. I’ll do my best to add chapter-specific warnings in the author’s notes of each chapter, so that you can skips parts that might be triggering. Let me know if any tags should be changed or added.

**Bisbee, Arizona**

_September 1996_

Dad had been gone for three weeks when they started to run out of money. Until that point, Dean had been enjoying the free time after a summer of gruelling training, of early mornings and late nights either hunting, or training for it. When Dad had said that he wanted Dean to stay behind for this one, to go to school and stay out of trouble, and to keep an eye on Sammy, Dean had been relieved. He loved hunting, but getting their tiny, raggedy apartment to themselves for a few weeks sounded pretty great. It had been, too. Sammy was as whiny as any thirteen-year-old, and sometimes Dean wanted to strangle him, but their Dad was a hard-ass in a way that not even Sammy at his most irritating could imitate.

Besides, Sammy had been in a particularly good mood since school had started up. With Dad being gone, Dean had snuck him a twenty and forged a signature to let Sam try out for the soccer team, and the little geek was ecstatic. Between soccer and homework, there was barely any time for him to be his usual, annoying self.

So things had been good, until they ran out of money. The third weekend after Dad’s departure, Dean went to the stash of money to grab a few bills and head to the grocery store, only to find that they were almost out. Left in the jar was a measly ten, and a couple of coins, mostly pennies. The panic he felt was so sharp that his sight went blurry, and he had to hold on tight to the kitchen counter to keep himself upright.

“Sammy!” he shouted, not caring that it was barely eight in the morning on a Saturday. “Sammy, you little bitch, did you steal my money?”

He pulled the door to the one bedroom open with a bang, and found his little brother sitting up, peering at him under bangs that were getting too long.

“Did you steal the fucking money?”

Dean was barely aware of his own body as he grabbed onto Sam’s shoulders and shook them.

“I only took a little,” Sammy said, sullen as ever. “The twenty you gave me was only enough for the membership, and I needed to pay for a uniform too! I would have told you but I thought it wasn’t a big deal.”

“Not a- what do you mean, not a big deal? Sammy, how the hell am I meant to get us food without any money? Dad’s not gonna be back for ages.”

“You could get a job,” said Sam. “Not like you do much, anyway.”

And damn it, but Sam sounded exactly like Dad when he said that, the same disappointed tone of voice, like Dean would never amount to anything in live and the least he could do was look after the rest of their little family. Dean’s anger melted out of him, and instead he found himself blinking back tears.

Hoping that Sammy couldn’t see him in the darkness, he turned on his heels and walked out of the room, not bothering to close the door behind him.

“Hey, asshole, I was sleeping!” shouted Sam, but by that point Dean was already putting on his boots and getting out of the apartment.

It was so typical, of course Sammy would think that Dean was just being mean for not giving him any money, and for getting upset when it was missing. He was only thirteen, and apparently didn’t understand what it was like to scrounge up pennies to feed annoying, always growing little brothers. The worst part, though, the worst part was that he managed to make Dean feel like such a failure. He would never amount to anything, and knowing that Sam thought that of him felt just as disheartening as that look Dad would get whenever Dean screwed up during a hunt.

The walk to the big Smitty’s was only about fifteen minutes, and all too soon Dean was faced with the issue of figuring out just what he could get for his measly ten dollars. Feeling hopeless, he grabbed a few cans of tomato soup, hoping that he remembered right and they had some macaroni and food. A loaf of bread for lunches for Sam, and some lunch meat, and some canned ham too, to fill out the soup a bit more, and though he desperately recounted the prices in the hope that he was wrong, that meagre collection left him with only eleven cents. Looking down in the basket, it was suddenly hard to breathe.

There was no way this would last them for weeks until Dad came home. Even with the few things they had left in the house, this would barely last them until the next weekend, even if Dean went without lunch. Sammy had been eating more than ever lately, apparently finally getting near the growth spurt he had been wanting for ages, and Dean thought that the food he had would barely be enough for a growing thirteen-year-old, let alone for two teenagers.

 _Fuck_. What was he supposed to do?

Monday morning came, and Dean was no closer to a solution. He had to sit back down after his first attempt to get out of bed, feeling so dizzy for a moment that he thought for sure that he would pass out. Sammy had already gotten up, luckily, so there was no one there to witness Dean’s pathetic self. His panic about the food had been enough to quell his appetite for most of the weekend, and apart from some mac-and-cheese for dinner on Saturday, he had gone without. At his point his stomach wasn’t even growling any more, it just felt unpleasantly hollow.

“You coming, or what?” said Sam, sticking his head through to door.

“Dammit, Sammy, don’t scare me like that!”

Sammy giggled. “Not my fault you were about to fall asleep again. We need to go!”

“Fine, fine, I’m coming!”

Grabbing a t-shirt from the floor (and smelling the armpits to make sure it wasn’t too bad), Dean quickly got dressed. He made a half-hearted attempt to brush his teeth, and joined Sam by the door not five minutes later.

“You smell,” said his little brother.

“You stink,” Dean replied, the answer almost second nature.

The whole way to the middle school, Sammy chatted away about the fun week he had ahead of him. The soccer team had their first game that Wednesday afternoon, and Dean had to promise three times that he would be there before the kid was happy, but it was good to see him so excited. These days, Sammy’s mood was enough to give anyone whiplash. He could go from smiling and happy as all that one minute, to fuming out the ears the next. Surely Dean had not been that much of a brat when he was thirteen? He would have remembered that, for sure.

Dean waved him goodbye outside the middle school, and then kicked up the pace to try to make it to the high school in time. At least the two were only a few hundred yards from each other, which meant that Dean could fulfil his obligation and deliver Sammy safely to school, and still make it to homeroom on time.

The high school looked just like any of the other countless schools Dean had attended over the years, and even thought he had been there for a few weeks at that point he still had to remind himself of the directions to the right classroom. Go to enough nondescript gray buildings over the years, and they all start to blend together.

Miss Adams had just started roll call as Dean got in, sinking into one of the desks on the back row. He grinned at Amy in the row in front, and delighted at the deep red color creeping up her neck.

“Nice of you to join us, Dean.”

“No biggie,” said Dean, grinning at the teacher, too. “I didn’t have anything better to do this morning.”

The longer the day lasted, the thinner spread Dean felt. His mind felt fuzzy, as if there was a film between him and the rest of the school. He tried to keep up the bravado with the rest of the students, and it was made easier since he had not really bothered to make friends with any of them. He exchanged fist bumps with some of the guys from his P.E. class, and flashed winning smiles at a few of the girls he recognised from his classes, but if any of them tried to involve him in any conversations he made his excuses and got away quickly.

His last class of the was Algebra, which was an absolute pain in the ass even on the best of days, but this Monday Dean found himself unable to pay any attention. Dr Stevens, the Algebra teacher, was usually a riot even if the class material was impossible for Dean to understand. The teacher was about forty, and had stories to last for years. The first day of class, he had told them about the time he got put in prison for a year for fighting communism, and had then gone on to talk about linear equations without any further explanations.

This afternoon, Dean got told off twice for not listening within twenty minutes of the class starting, and despite that couldn’t seem to make the words make sense. He at least kept from drawing any attention to himself until the end of the class, and was about to escape out the door when Dr Stevens spoke up.

“Mr Winchester, may I have a word with you?”

“Of course, Doc,” Dean said, and leaned back in his desk as the rest of the students milled out, eager to escape school for the day.

“Is there something wrong at home, Dean?” the teacher asked, concern or maybe pity all over his face.

Dean felt a bit nauseated, his empty stomach not helping matters at all. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, glad that at least his voice wasn’t betraying how nervous this made him.

“You’re looking real tired today,” said Dr Stevens, “I’m just concerned about you.”

“No need to be,” said Dean. “My little brother got me sick over the weekend and I’m still getting over it. I’ll be right as rain in no time.”

Dr Stevens stared at him long enough to make Dean feel uncomfortable, before finally nodding. “Alright, then. I hope you know that you can turn to me if anything is wrong.”

“Of course, Doc,” said Dean, taking that for a dismissal and getting the hell out of dodge before the teacher thought of anything else to interrogate him about.

Dean didn’t even try to do his homework when he came home that afternoon, instead he stretched out on the sofa and tried to nap. Annoyingly, Sam seemed to think that his silence was an invitation to talk, so he didn’t get a moment’s peace for an actual nap, but at least he got to rest his eyes.

When the phone rang, he was startled out of his dozing, and barely beat Sam to it. The younger boy scowled at him, but Dean scuffed him over the head and gestured for him to get back to his homework. At least one of them would finish school with decent grades.

“Dad?”

“Hi son,” said his father’s gruff voice, and Dean breathed out. “Just calling to check in. I might disappear off grid for a few days, and I need to know that you can hold down the fort.”

The brief relief at his father’s voice vanished as soon as it had appeared. “About that – listen, dad, we don’t have a whole lot of money left and I don’t really know what we’ll do for food.”

The silence on the other end was telling, and it took a good half minute for his father to reply. “I don’t expect these kind of problems from you any more, Dean, you should be old enough to budget the money I leave you. See if any of the neighbours will let you mow their lawns.”

“Yes sir,” said Dean, not bother to mention that there were no lawns nearby, and besides it was late enough in the season that any lawn in Arizona was burned yellow.

“I will call to check in when I’m finished chasing this lead. Don’t disappoint me, son.”

“Yes sir,” said Dean again, and held the phone for another minute even as his father had hung up.

“You shouldn’t let him walk all over you like that,” said Sam.

“I don’t let him walk all over me,” said Dean.

“He’s not wrong, though,” said Sam. “It can’t be that hard to keep track of a bit of money.”

Dean was suddenly fuming. “You little brat, who was it that took the money in the first place?”

“There’s no way that I took enough for it to be a problem,” argued Sam with that indignant voice of his that made Dean see red. “You’re just not very good with money, is all.”

“I’m going out,” said Dean, and ignored the outrage from his brother at the declaration. “I’ll see if I can hustle some money. Get some soup if you’re hungry, or hell, starve for all I care.”

He slammed the door behind him, and glared at the next door neighbour when they looked up from unlocking their door. “What the hell are you staring at?”

The nearest bar was just down the block, and Dean had been in a few times so knew that it was seedy enough to not ask for an ID. Besides, he was almost eighteen, and then it would be legal for him to drink in Canada, so really, he didn’t see what the big deal was.

“A beer,” he said to the bartender, a woman in her thirties who wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but who had nice enough tits that Dean did a double take and then added “sweetheart.”

“You keep dreaming that dream, cupcake,” she said, and the blush reach his ears. “That’ll be a dollar fifty.”

Suddenly Dean was sweating. How had he forgotten that he would need money for this? He started patting the back of his jeans, thinking that he could maybe pretend to have forgotten his wallet, when the man next to him spoke up.

“I’ll cover it.”

The bartender just grabbed the money and went on to serve the next customer, leaving Dean alone with the stranger. “Thanks, man,” he said, going for a casual smile. “’ppreciate it.”

The man looked him up and down, staring long enough that Dean’s blush started to return. “Happy to help such a pretty young man,” said the man, and suddenly his smile looked a lot less pretty.

He was at least thirty five, with a receding hair line and a bit of a beer belly. His smile was wide, but his eyes looked at Dean as if they were staring straight through his clothes and into his soul. Suddenly the beer seemed a lot less enticing.

“I’ll get out of your hair,” said Dean once he found his voice. “Thanks again.”

But before he had a chance to take a single step away from the bar and the man, he was grabbed around the wrist and held on tight. “I think I deserve some better thanks than that,” said the man, and his breath smelled rotten.

Before Dean could react, the other hand had found its way to the back of his jeans, groping him. For a second he could do nothing, just stand there and let the gross man with his beady eyes and gross, greasy hair touch him, but then he found himself again. He was Dean Winchester, dammit, if he could face down werewolves then he could face down a creep at a bar.

“Leave me the fuck alone,” he said, and then stomped on the man’s foot.

He was let go with a screech, and weaselled his way through the crowd without looking back. The beer was left forgotten on the bar, but Dean couldn’t care less about that as he rushed down the street, breathing heavily and finding it difficult to see anything for the tears in his eyes, threatening to spill over. He found himself on a bench in the park near their building, hugging his knees to his chest and trying to take deep breaths.

The combination of the hollow in is stomach and the hollow in his chest kept him on that bench until late into the night, when he finally snuck back into the apartment. The soft snores from Sam in the next bed calmed him enough that he finally fell asleep, well into the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for child neglect, creepy behaviour from an adult towards a minor, and attempt at underage drinking
> 
> Thank you for reading, any feedback is welcome!


End file.
